Amos Oz: Return to incurable loneliness

What is more natural for a writer than to comment on his book in the premises of his publisher? Still, Amos Oz wonders. As if it is, after all, strange. Out of place. "Look at me, he says. I'm sitting in front of you, in Galimar's salon, surrounded by books, and you're talking about mine. What an irony of fate, when I think... I mean, it's the opposite."

Opposite of what? His former dreams? In one year, Oz will be three quarters of a century old. At almost 75 years old, he is unanimously considered the most important Israeli writer of his generation. As much for his work of fiction and memory - Moj Mihailo, Dodirnuti vodu, Dodirnuti vetar, Priča o ljubju i tmini (Galimar, 1996, 1997, 2004), as much for his engaged essays - Help us to divorce! or How to cure a heretic (Galimar 2004, 2006). That's exactly why.

Perhaps this impression of what has been achieved is what prompts him to look back today. By the irony of fate, Amos Oz would have given everything in his youth just to not... become a writer!

Feeling of lack

"It was even worse, he says. At that time I ran away from home to the kibbutz. I had rebelled against my father. I hated what he represented back then. For a long time I wanted to be his exact opposite. He voted for the conservatives, I for the socialists.

"Of course I used my kibbutz experience to write Among Friends"

He thought that the land of Israel belonged only to the Jews, I wanted to fight to share it with the Palestinians. He was small, I wanted to become big - as for that, I confess, I failed! After all, my father was an intellectual, and I chose to be a truck driver".

Truck driver? Really? With his bright eyes, Oz slyly watches his interlocutor over a cup of coffee. "Yes, really... But after a while, I cooled down. The guys in the kibbutz were strong and tanned. I was a man from the city, pale, I wasn't good for God knows what. He admits that the girls immediately grabbed him. "To impress them , I started making up stories. And writing." That's how fiction got the better of the trucker, that's how Amos Oz became a writer.

Today, the great Israeli writer draws two lessons from that episode. The first is that "all rebellions are doomed to failure." Second, that the closed environment of the kibbutz is a fantastic laboratory to study human passions, weaknesses and desires.

"Of course I used the kibbutz experience to write Among Friends, he says. But the kibbutz is just an excuse. What interests me in this book, as in a good part of my work, are things that are very complex and very simple. The feeling of lack, loss, fear of death, isolation, loneliness".

Incurable loneliness

We are wrong when we say that Amos Oz is a writer. He, like Janus, is simultaneously - two writers. There is the engaged intellectual first, the one whose essays, texts and part of the books - among them the Black Box - deal with the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the fight against extremism.

"Love is a rare commodity. I have shown that in many of my books"

But there is also, perhaps less visible? – Amos Oz poet of intimate, everyday, small life. The same one who, sitting in front of us in the Galimara salon, talks about his youth, about his deceptively true dreams, about the truck driver, his adventures with girls... And who keeps coming back to that "incurable loneliness" that haunts his heroes in kibbutzim, even from Land of the Jackals (1965) to Among Friends, via Somewhere Elsewhere (1966).

Think of Michelangelo's painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he says. That's how I see my heroes. They extend their hands to each other. Their fingers almost touch, but never connect."

Oh, just a little bit. Barely a few millimeters. But the fact is that the heroes of Amos Oz come closer in vain, they do not touch each other. They are not found. Is it not because the writer does not believe in that other "very complex and simple thing" called love? "You're right, he says, I write a lot about love, but in an unsentimental way. Because love, you know, is not always (a) gift. It is sometimes even an obstacle in life".

What does he mean by that? That we are hard to deceive when it comes to love. "One of my famous countrymen, Jesus, believed in universal love. Like David Dagan, one of my heroes, he thought that anyone, if he really wants to make an effort, can succeed in loving his neighbor.

He was wrong. Love is a rare commodity. I have shown this in many of my books. None of us can really love more than five or six people. On that subject, Jesus asks too much!"

As for Israel, it is another topic of "slight disappointment" for him.

There was an amused silence. Amos Oz follows his thought within himself. Again, Jesus does not say: be just to one another. Or: respect each other. He says: love one another.

But I don't feel the need to love my enemy. What I want - is to live in peace with him, that's all. Do you remember the old slogan of the sixties: "Make love, not war"? I invented something else: "Make peace, not love".

A slight disappointment

Peace. Peace now. Isn't that the name of the movement in favor of two states - Palestinian and Israeli, which Amos Oz helped to form in 1978? What balance did he make? Is he disappointed? "Of course". But he still believes in a possible peace. "Against universal love, peace is still an attainable goal. It just takes a little patience".

As for Israel, it is another topic of "slight disappointment" for him. Because Israel, he says, is the realization of a dream. And that all dreams, when they become reality, basically disappoint us. It's like that in all domains, a trip abroad, a novel or even, why not, some sexual fantasy. The only way to keep the dream intact would be to never try to make it come true..."

We would like to know how he sees the future. But he puts an end, very politely on the subject of politics. It's clear that sensitive Oz wants to express himself today. "Shall we return to literature?"

We return to literature. To him. There is a conversation about childhood again. To his father who left Lithuania in 1933 and spoke 11 languages. About his mother, who in the forties refused to let her son learn a language other than Hebrew - because, she said, if I learned a European language, Europe would attract me and trap me in the nets of that deadly continent".

A very funny exercise

Finally, it is about him, little Amos, an only child, who is often forced to accompany his parents to the numerous taverns of Jerusalem and not to protest. If he was patient, they promised him ice cream.

Isn't it just one step from shoes to writing?

"While the adults were talking, in order not to die of boredom, I developed a strategy," he remembers. His eyes sparkled again. "I studied the expressions, body language, clothes, even the shoes of those adults. After all, especially the shoes of of great persons... It is incredible what they tell us about their owners.

Is someone pretending or being discreet, poor or wanting to show off... I seriously recommend this little game to you, he says. It's a very fun exercise, very instructive, and can earn you ice cream! Even today, instead of reading bad newspapers, I indulge in this exercise at the dentist or in airports. That's how I became a writer, you see!"

Isn't it just one step from shoes to writing? We took a discreet look at his black shoes... Unfortunately, Oz's moccasins remained desperately mute that day.

(Literary supplement by Mondo; translated by Branka Bogavac)